Afghan worker and women's advocate Mitrashiva Hussaini bound for Tamworth survived Taliban ambush and refugee camp

She described the makeshift camp of 10,000 desperate would-be refugees as filthy, brutal and rife with constant violence. Several people were killed in front of her.

But despite being repeatedly offered a trip to the US by American immigrations officials, she waited until she found an Australian.

"It took me three days to get there and three nights I didn't sleep. It was so so dirty," she said.

Australian United Nations (UN) colleagues Jennifer and Felicity were both "so honest", Ms Hussaini said.

"All of the Australians I know are so honest," she said.

"That's why I love Australia. I'm so grateful that Australia let me onto the airlines ... and then brought me to Dubai. They truly helped us a lot.

"Australians ... were so kind, they were so honest.

"I was looking at them and I was literally crying. I was like - see there are human beings."

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She is now just weeks away from achieving her dream of moving to Tamworth.

Ms Hussaini has already spent a fortnight in hotel quarantine, but she's now counting down the days until October 12, when she will be entitled to leave immigration detention, also in a hotel.

It's a far cry from Afghanistan, where the 27-year-old UN worker once narrowly escaped a Taliban ambush because one of the people who informed on her had an 11th-hour crisis of conscience. Her name is still on a Taliban hit list.

The men of the small community wanted her dead because she led a sexual harassment workshop among the women of the village. She still did the workshop, but she flew in, instead of driving.

The Taliban hated her for two reasons.

Ms Hussaini was both a member of Afghanistan's Hazara ethnic minority and had spent years volunteering as a women's rights advocate.

In the 1990s, the Taliban slaughtered countless Hazara during the country's first civil war, infamously massacring thousands of civilians after the capture of the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif in 1998.

The Taliban have promised not to behave the same way this time, but Ms Hussaini said their promises are just words.

She is safe, but family members are also on hit lists, and the government is hunting them down, she said.

"I felt great, at the same time I don't feel great as well. Thousands of others are in danger, my family are in danger. Every time they're in a group chat; 'Tonight the Taliban are going to houses'. My brother is there. He's a qualified, educated person. He was working with me," she said.

"There are thousands of others. This achievement of 20 years of Afghanistan is gone in the blink of an eye."

Ms Hussaini said hundreds of Afghans who worked for the Australian government as translators or in other jobs are fleeing the country, or are in hiding in sheds and in bedrooms.

Multicultural Tamworth organiser Eddie Whitham helped Ms Hussaini get a visa to Australia, after lobbying relentlessly to get her on a plane out of the country.

They met briefly in the Dubai airport five years ago, but Mr Whitham considers her a daughter. They communicated for years.

Ms Hussaini is on a 449 visa, which grants temporary protection for five years or until the Australian government decides she can safely return to Afghanistan.

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